Bill Murray Jumps Out a Plane. ...
Bill Murray jumped out of a plane last Friday as part of the opening of the 50th anniversary Chicago Air & Water Show. Surprisingly, there was apparently no kind of self-promotion involved. He wasn’t holding a sign advertising his villainous turn in this fall’s City of Ember, and he didn’t use the opportunity to announce being cast in The Bucket List 2 (which he’s not really in, and which hopefully isn’t even in the works). As far as I can tell, the only reason for Murray’s participation was that he’s originally from the area and he wanted to experience skydiving — even if strapped to an Army parachutist.
So, while there is seemingly nothing necessarily movie related about the jump, the video of Murray soaring through the air (check out the extended footage, lasting almost 6 minutes, here) did make me want to re-watch one of my favorite of his movies, the underrated What About Bob? I’m not sure if the audio on the camera would have picked it up, anyway, but I was hoping Murray would start screaming, “I’m flying! I’m flying!”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to relate all of his media appearances to his filmography. If he were, though, he could have easily combined some by also wearing a barely attached toupee, which would look mighty funny while he’s falling, and of course he could have pretended like the experience was a mission of Team Zissou.